Life With Out A Purpose
by RantWaitingToHappen
Summary: I hate character death fics with a passion, but hypocritical me, I had to get this out of my head! Short oneshot! Papa!Gibbs, H/C! Please R&R! Even if you don't like character deaths, give it a shot, yeah? Thank you.


Cancer.

It had been unexpected really. I'd always figured he'd go down swingin', kicking and screaming. Maybe in a blaze of fire, even.

I never thought it would hurt so much to see him go. His death was slow and painful, and even on the really bad days, I sat by his bedside and held him in my arms.

I don't remember ever leaving the hospital for more than an hour or so, to get changed, pick up some of his things, and rent a few movies I thought he might like. He'd always been a mega movie-buff.

At first, the nurses and the doctors had tried to convince me to go home, and take a break, told me that I looked tired, but after a month they had given up. Visiting hours began, and ended around noon, but they did not apply to me, and everyone of the staff knew it. Time limits didn't apply when you knew the inevitable end. I remember looking back a mere week before I had pressured him into going to the Doctors', because he looked a bit pale. Told him not to come back to work unless he was in top form. Those words came back to haunt me later.

I remembered how it was simply a cough, nothing to worry about, a few bouts of nausea, and a wave of dizziness every now and then. How had all those small symptoms turned into cancer? It didn't hit me until the very last minute. When he was lying there, helpless and vulnerable, and God he had looked so unbearably young in that large hospital bed. It hit me then that he was dying.

Except I had had an entire year of watching my boy break down and sob into my arms to realize it. The epiphany never came.

A whole year.

A year of sleep deprived nights, and empty mornings.

A year of chemotherapy.

A year of trying to get him to eat solid foods, watching him chuck it back up, blood smearing his lips.

A year of embracing his fatigued body, in hopes of comforting him, staying up nights, telling him it would all be fine, telling him in a few months all this would be behind them.

A year of assuring him-or perhaps himself-that his position at NCIS was still waiting for him when he got better.

A year of late nights, laying beside him on the hospital bed, avoiding the tubes and all those damned complicated wires, as I clung to his frail body, wrapped my arm around him.

A year of praying to a God I'd hoped desperately would hear my pleas-a God I hadn't prayed to since the deaths of my wife and daughter.

A year of misery, a year of hope, a year of melancholy, a year of misfortune, a year of tears and hard wracking sobs, a year of trying to laugh at his jokes without crying, a year of pretending it was all fine, a year of pretending he was fine, a year of pretending I was fine, a year of having him deteriorate before me, a year of begging to no one in particular to spare him.

Oh Lord, please, not him.

A year. A year of hell and torment, and fear and distress, and horror. I'd had a year for the news to hit me, a year for it to be completely clear. He had cancer. He was dying.

Except it didn't hit me.

I had been defiant, and I had been in utter denial. I hadn't given up and gone home, I hadn't accepted the fact that this was really the end, I had chosen to keep hope and ignore the doctors. Even Ducky, when he told attempted to talk to me, tell me to accept the awful truth, I shunned him. Abby was an inconsolable mess. She stopped putting on makeup, her hair was never done anymore, her loud music in the lab had stopped playing, her attire was almost normal looking to a point nowadays, even. Something about the light in her eyes had ceased to shine and glimmer; CaffPows! were but a distant memory.

Kate thought the answer was in God and prayer and everyday her eyes became more red and more puffy with the tears she shed in the secrecy of her own home; random crucifixes could be found all over the bullpen, a bible on every desk, no one questioned them. Tim had delved himself into research; he researched chemotherapy and its effects on the patient, he researched mortality percentage on cancer, researched relapses in cancer survivors, and if one day he happened to shove the computer off his desk and fling the keyboard against the bullpen in anger, it was replaced the next day, no questions asked.

So when the day did come, I sat there, holding his hand in the palm of mine. His green eyes dull, his skin ashen gray, like the sky right before a terrible storm, he looked absolutely exhausted. I hadn't noticed anything was truly wrong until his fingers very softly squeezed mine, and I looked down to see him smiling softly, a serene look of peacefulness on his face. Like in that year he'd come to accept something, had come to terms with things, and I didn't understand that look at all.

"It's okay." he whispered, voice cracking, chest heaving. Those were the last words I heard him speak, because the line had gone dead, and I remember thinking how irritating the noise was, and that someone should quiet it, before it woke up my boy. He needed his rest if he was going to get better, come back to NCIS, be my second in command, be the person I needed to tell me when to get my head out of my ass, be my confidant after a hard long case.

I needed him to be with me in the basement, help me sand the boat-he'd been coming up with clever ideas as to how to get the damned thing out of there.

I needed him to sit on my couch with me, eat cold pizza from last night with me, tell me coffee wasn't the only beverage in the world as he laughed.

I needed him to cause a ruckus with Abby, cheer her up again, convince her to get a new tattoo.

I needed him to call Tim 'McGoo' and wind him up, make him reach a higher potential, make him roll his eyes.

I needed him to fight for the front seat of the van with Kate again, make her bicker aimlessly, childishly, get her to stop crying in the womens bathroom at work.

I needed him to get down to Duckys' office with scones and tea and ask to hear a story from his past, sit his butt down at the corner of his desk and make conversation.

I needed him to...I needed him...

That's when the doctors and nurses rushed in, and one doctor shook her head sadly, and said, "Time of death, 5:09 am."

_Time of death? _I had wondered idly, rubbing his suddenly cold hand.

"I'm sorry." The doctor, the one who'd called the time of death, was standing in front of me, a mixture of concern and sadness on her face.

I blinked, not staring directly into her eyes. Instead, I chose to gaze down, at his motionless figure. His cold motionless figure. He looked pale and drawn like a corpse on one of Ducks' metal autopsy tables...

That is when it hit me.

Full blown, in the face, knocking me backwards a few thousand yards. Oh God. Oh no. No no no no no. Please no. Tony?

Where there had been denial and fake smiles of assurance, broke out the emotions I'd been suppressing since the moment he'd come to me, looking out of place and frightened, and the words 'terminal cancer' had come out of his mouth.

Oh no.

My senses came back full force. I could smell death, hear death, see death, feel death, and it was more agonizing than any bullet that had ever torn through flesh and bone, more painful than any blade I'd ever been pierced with, and I could not for the life of me breath, it hurt so damned much.

My face was wet and I realised for the first time that I had been crying silently up until then.

He was dead.

And even though I'd had a whole year to grasp the fact that the end would inevitably come, I had spent that time pretending that the whole world was at peace, and that all was perfect, and in its' right place because there was no way Tony could die. No way the last good thing in my life could be taken from me so mercilessly, in such a cruel manner, in such a small amound of time.

This wasn't happening. It couldn't be happening. There had to be a reason for everything, and I could not fathom a single reason for his death. What was death without a reason? Like life without a purpose. This wasn't right, and I hoped God did work in mysterious ways, that he had some kind of plan, that something, anything good came out of all this senselessness. I didn't think so.

So as I get up, walk to the front of the room, about to give a eulogy about the only man I have ever loved so unconditionally, I take a deep breath, feel my heart breaking on every word, as I stand on an alter, next to his coffin, hands trembling, and say.

"No parent should ever have to bury their child..."

the end.


End file.
